Hi all,
Dh and I are still a year or so away from TTC, but I've been doing a lot of reading about homebirths and would really like us to seriously consider it. This will be DH's second birth - he has a daughter from his previous marriage. The ex-wife was pretty high risk - Type 1 diabetes and was hospitalized at some point during the pregnancy for complications.
His first complaint is that not all midwives necessarily believe in the midwife model of care, just as not all docs believe in the medical model of care. I'll give him that, but he won't buy into my argument that we're more likely to get a midwife who DOES practice the midwife, woman-centered, natural event model of care than we are to get a doc who believes and practices this way.
I'm also trying to get him to understand the importance of seeing one person all the way through the pregnancy, labor and delivery, rather than how I have heard it works with the docs. My friends who have OB's are forced to see 3 or 4 different docs for their prenatal visits, b/c the OB group won't guarantee that a particular doc will be available to deliver a baby. He doesn't understand why that would matter. And although we haven't talked in depth about it, doesn't seem to understand that I would just prefer having a relationship with the person who is involved with this. Same reason we see the same dentist on a regular basis and the same reason we see the same counselor.
Also his main argument seems to be - "well, delivering in a hospital must be better and safer, otherwise things wouldn't have changed over the years. And since most people deliver in hospitals, that must make it better."
He tends to be very open minded, and I'm not sure where the resistance is coming from. I've convinced him to read Baby Catcher, which I just finished. And I have some readings from school that talk about the politics and economics of how birthing shifted from home to hospital in the first place.
He also argues that obviously the statistics on the safety of home-births are slanted b/c they are posted/researched by midwife/homebirth advocacy groups. He says all the midwives he and his previous wife talked to were hippies who were too willing to take risks.
Any other books people can recommend or tactics to help him understand why this would be important to me? Sorry this is soo long. We just had our first real conversation about this last night and I was actually surprised about how against it he seemed. Or more so about how normal he thought hospital births were.
Kristi
Dh and I are still a year or so away from TTC, but I've been doing a lot of reading about homebirths and would really like us to seriously consider it. This will be DH's second birth - he has a daughter from his previous marriage. The ex-wife was pretty high risk - Type 1 diabetes and was hospitalized at some point during the pregnancy for complications.
His first complaint is that not all midwives necessarily believe in the midwife model of care, just as not all docs believe in the medical model of care. I'll give him that, but he won't buy into my argument that we're more likely to get a midwife who DOES practice the midwife, woman-centered, natural event model of care than we are to get a doc who believes and practices this way.
I'm also trying to get him to understand the importance of seeing one person all the way through the pregnancy, labor and delivery, rather than how I have heard it works with the docs. My friends who have OB's are forced to see 3 or 4 different docs for their prenatal visits, b/c the OB group won't guarantee that a particular doc will be available to deliver a baby. He doesn't understand why that would matter. And although we haven't talked in depth about it, doesn't seem to understand that I would just prefer having a relationship with the person who is involved with this. Same reason we see the same dentist on a regular basis and the same reason we see the same counselor.
Also his main argument seems to be - "well, delivering in a hospital must be better and safer, otherwise things wouldn't have changed over the years. And since most people deliver in hospitals, that must make it better."
He tends to be very open minded, and I'm not sure where the resistance is coming from. I've convinced him to read Baby Catcher, which I just finished. And I have some readings from school that talk about the politics and economics of how birthing shifted from home to hospital in the first place.
He also argues that obviously the statistics on the safety of home-births are slanted b/c they are posted/researched by midwife/homebirth advocacy groups. He says all the midwives he and his previous wife talked to were hippies who were too willing to take risks.
Any other books people can recommend or tactics to help him understand why this would be important to me? Sorry this is soo long. We just had our first real conversation about this last night and I was actually surprised about how against it he seemed. Or more so about how normal he thought hospital births were.
Kristi
